Alyssa gets strange medical ailment in Peru, part 1 of I am sure many

So I have a veritable rainforest of bugs that call my bed their home, so I am getting quite used to waking up with bug bites in all sorts of awkward places. I usually try to brush my bed out before I get in it; sometimes I just spray Raid directly into sheets, which will probably cut several years off my life, but is often worth it, in my opinion. A couple days ago, I had a bug bite on my sternum…ish. Two days ago, I woke up to a huge red rash covering the entire area. I assumed I was just scratching it in my sleep and it was irritated, until the next morning, when there were blisters all over it and I could no longer do anything but lie very still on my back without causing myself a large amount of pain. Rachel came over coincidentally, and I told her to fetch our Cusqueña doctor friend, Otilia. Otilia came over, was properly dismayed, and informed me that this was the work of the llulle (pronounced yoo-yay), an insect native only to the high jungle of northern Peru.

Cool, I love endemism.

Otilia first offered to inject me with something, this time, an anti-inflammatory (some of you may remember the time another Peruvian doctor offered to inject me with Penicillin to see if I was allergic). I called Suni, one of our Peace Corps doctors, who (bless her Limeña heart), told Otilia that Volunteers aren’t allowed to receive injections at site, and supposedly tried to call PC Washington to see if anyone there had heard of this bug. At least that’s what Otilia said (“La doctora está llamando por otro lado…Washington?”). As far as the injection thing goes, for anyone who has seen me get a shot, or had to be pulled out of Spanish class on a weekly basis to hold my hand during one, this was obviously good news. Otilia then told me that people have tried to cure llulle rashes through traditional methods, but the only thing that cures llulle is the application of the leaves a llulle plant. She told me this gravely, and put in as an aside that she didn’t believe in that sort of stuff, but it was true. She even put finger quotes around the word “believe.” She also told me that I needed to apply lemon. Okay, whatever. So this very sweet woman I don’t know, Gloria, is in my bedroom suddenly, pouring lemon on my chest. Rachel is watching this debacle and says, “Um, Alyssa, you’re kind of…falling out…there.” I responded, “Rachel, a woman I don’t know if making ceviche out of my cleavage, do I look like my dignity is high on my list of priorities?” Gloria then went looking for the llulle plant, which she found and brought back. She heated it and applied the juice, and then left. Otilia brought me some antihistamine and a tranquilizer. The latter was a very good idea, for it is quite boring to lie motionless on one’s back for long periods of time. Unfortunately, I have an unexplainable resistance to tranquilizers (Benadryl, Dramamine, and Tylenol 3 all fail to knock me out), but I had a pleasant three hours or so.

I wake up today, and the wound is worse. Far more blisters and pain. Excellent. Otilia comes by, looks, and said, “Yeah…it’s what I thought. Gloria brought the wrong plant.”
(An aside: I did not realize until that moment that the word “equivocado” could be used for inanimate objects to mean “wrong” and not necessarily “mistaken.” So at the time it sounded like “the plant was mistaken!” which made me laugh for 12 seconds or so.) So I lived with sticky plant goo on me and all over my sheets for a day for nothing. Humberto brought the correct plant today, or so I hope, and showed me how to heat it, but left in a hurry due to the delicateness of the rash’s placement. This time, Señora Teo applied the plant goo. Rachel ran into Juan, whom I was supposed to meet with today, in the street. The gossip is getting around town that I’m out with the llulle. Juan informed her that the only proven way to cure llulle is the application of breast milk. He assumed that for some reason she would not understand the phrase “leche maternal,” and gave her some sort of charade that I would pay money to see. Rachel then came over, told me about her encounter with Juan, and announced, “I brought you chocolate, pasta for dinner if you want it, some cake, a ‘Friends’ DVD, and a book, you know, if you want me to read aloud to you. And you know I would lactate on you if I could. All over.” For my very adorably Southern sitemate, who cannot say the word “nipple,” this was a very amusing announcement.

Otilia also has this funny habit of very suddenly assuming you (actually, I think she only does it to me and Rachel) lack the most basic knowledge and patiently correcting you. She said today about the wound, “It resembles first-degree burn,” and I said, “No, second-degree burn, first-degree burns don’t blister.” She smiled and said, “No no, sweetie, you didn’t get burnt. You got bit by a bug.”

Teo thinks I will be suffering from the llulle for another week. That is the worst news I have heard in a long time. I hurt quite a lot and am very useless and have shed a lot of tears in just these two days. I want lots of things I can’t have, American medicine (or at least being within 19 hours of the PC doctors in Lima) being at the top of the list. It makes me want to go on medical leave in Piura right now, and go to the clinic, and live somewhere where the bathroom is fewer than a hill away and there’s no rain, but at the same time I know I might as well stick it out here, where people fuss over me and make sure I get meals and tranquilizers. The only thing I risk here is more llulle, which it seems I already have on my arm. Good Lord.

One thing I do when I feel bad here, other than listen to my “Cheer up, you’re in the Peace Corps” playlist, is read Close of Service profiles from Peru 4, who just left. We got issued the twice-annual PC-Peru magazine when we got here, and in it, all of the exiting Volunteers reflect on their service, and talk about all the horrible experiences with a certain “it’s all over now, so it’s funny” detachment. I have read and re-read the COS Profiles a creepy number of times, given the number of Peru 4 Volunteers I actually met. It just makes me feel so good to think, “Someday, a very very very long time from now, this will all be over, and I will laugh at the fact that someone put the wrong homeopathic remedy on my blistering wound,” and COS profiles are physical evidence that the day is out there…somewhere.

To end this on a good note, the señora at the store closest to me started selling bananas for eating straight and not for frying, and they are some of the most delicious bananas I’ve ever had.

If you're bored, then you must be boring too

Well. I’m realizing reading this blog over that it does little to explain what I actually do with my life on a day-to-day basis, and I now have time to delve into this, because my computer is working! With the help of an external keyboard, but still. The point is I can now lie in my hammock, muse about my existence, listen to Phish, count how many Peace Corps stereotypes I am following at the exact same time, AND write blog entries.

The past two days at site (I got back from Piura Monday) have been uncharacteristically busy. Monday night was spent setting things up in my room (lightbulb, hammock, and clothesline, and bookcase). I’ve been doing a lot more independent living in my room than I was my first month here. The primary reason for this is that Flor is finishing her studies in Piura and Humberto is generally pretty busy, so there is no one to eat or hang out with at my house. I’d started eating my own breakfasts (the first day I ate cornflakes with milk in Peru was a great, great day), but it has now expanded to cooking my own dinners as well. This is just fine. It’s a little lonelier, but it’s nice to be in control of my own schedule as well as my own diet. Several times, Flor and Humberto didn’t eat dinner until 9:30, and that drove me nuts. Breakfast is usually cereal or oatmeal, purchased in Piura, and a mango, purchased down the street.

Before I continue with mundane details of my diet, I think I need to take a moment to try to convey the wonder that is the Santo Domingo mangos. They are by far my favorite thing about this town. This will probably change, either when I have more friends or when it’s not mango season anymore, but as of now...there are no words. Sometimes I try to make eating a mango, which is essentially a personal pleasure, into a social activity by eating them with a Swiss Army knife on the stoop. This is particularly fun when it’s raining, so...every afternoon. People walk by, I say hola, they smile at my obvious mango-induced grin, they either say hola or a very heartfelt “Provecho!”

Okay. Dinner is pasta and some sort of vegetable. I don’t have a fridge, so I tried to buy enough vegetables in Piura to last me just the week. Next week, I’m left to the challenges of the Santo Domingo vegetable market, which exists, but is unpredictable. So we’ll see how it goes. It’s weird how being here and living on the Peruvian diet, which is generally pretty vegetable-deprived (in addition, all raw vegetables are, by some sort of rule no one consulted me about, doused in lemon. It seems like a better idea than it is), makes me cherish vegetables I really couldn’t have cared less about in the States. Living alone has brought about the unfortunate habit of talking to myself, and I think last night I delivered an entire love monologue to my broccoli.

Lunch is my only social meal. I eat it at the house of Senora Teo, Lilian’s old house mom. She cooks for people in town who lack the resources, time, or ganas to cook for themselves, especially all the doctors and nurses who work at the health center. The food is pretty good, there’s a decent variety and even vegetables sometimes. We watch telenovelas and make her day if we clean our plates, her week if we ask for seconds on rice.

Back to the time by myself thing. I spend a lot of time by myself right now, and I love it more than I foresaw myself loving it. I partake of the obvious, reading (I average 3 books a week, therefore, seeking new reading material has become its own activity) and writing (I think I wrote Andrew 25 pages in the two weeks before I went to Piura). I also tend to find ways to make daily activities last a really long time. Granted, some activities just do take a long time at this house. The only running water is in the backyard, which is a solid 40-second walk from my room. But some activities, like putting on pants, should really take no longer in Peru than they do anywhere else, but somehow I manage to make them take ten minutes if I want it to. The iPod and the rain help with this.

Peace Corps has had the strange effect on me of making me really look forward to daily, life-managing tasks. Basically, it’s not a great feeling when you wake up and realize you have absolutely nothing to do that day, or that you have one thing, and it’s a great Peace Corps thing to be doing, but it’s only going to take like 45 seconds. For example, holding a meeting with our kids with whom we’re doing the World Map. It sounds like a great day’s activity, “On Thursday we had a meeting about the World Map,” but really, that meeting was one sentence: “We’re painting a World Map on Mondays and Tuesdays and 10 a.m., see you then.” But if you wake up and there’s something obvious to do, like something to clean , well then, you’ve won the game. There isn’t running water past 7 pm, so there are always dinner dishes to do in the morning. For some reason, it’s incredibly satisfying to wake up and think, “Dishes! I have to do something! My presence is required here!” I have to clean and organize my room this afternoon to account for my new kitchen table and bookcase. I can’t wait! I cannot imagine what would happen if someone had told 8-year-old me that 21-year-old me’s favorite activities would include eating broccoli and cleaning my room.

Anyway, yesterday Rachel and I plastered the wall we’re going to use for our World Map. This started off sort of shaky, but it looks great now, especially given that it covers some old election propaganda. Covering election propaganda is an immensely satisfying activity, as it is EVERYWHERE and pretty feo if you ask me. My new window busts through some propaganda as well, maybe I will continue and paint the outside of my room as well. But anyway, neither Rachel nor I had worked with plaster before, and we didn’t realize you can only mix a couple handfuls of it at a time to get it on the wall before it dries. A couple guys came over and offered us advice in this regard (we were, after all, white, female, young, and attempting to do construction in a public arena), but the advice was like, “You have to get the plaster on the wall before it dries!” “The dry plaster is useless!” Uh, thanks. So finally, I said to the guy who was most lingering, “Are you going to help or are you going to criticize?” He liked that. He repeated this comment to passersby approximately 7 times throughout the following 4 hours in which he lent us his support. We would have figured it out, but it was nice to have his help. The only really hard part was when some guy came up after I had been mixing plaster for like 3 hours and just started doing it for me. This did not sit well with me. I took a walk around the block, and when I returned, I explained that I had mixed probably 40 bowls of plaster that morning, and I certainly could have handled it, and if he was going to take over he needed to ask my permission. Like often happens when women show any assertiveness, he laughed at me, but whatever. I am here to act in ways appropriate to Peruvian culture, but I am not here to let machismo define what I can and cannot do. We are, after all, here to set an example. I mixed my own plaster in peace for the rest of the afternoon. My hands are dry but my soul is happy.

Today I held a meeting with everyone involved on the trash project. This was actually a bold move, as the project is switching hands from Juan, my counterpart, to the department of sanitation in the municipality, a decision that has caused no small amount of disagreement. I made them do a FODA (SWOT in English: strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis of the project. I should have known this would not go well after I had brightly explained that we were there to analyze the project that is now in a state of transition and figure out our goals, explained the four categories, and asked for strengths of the project, to which Juan raised his hand and asked, “Yeah, what’s the point of this?” Just when you think someone’s on your side. At some point, Juan and Jorge, the guy in charge of the department, started interrupting and yelling at each other about some land rights issues, and I just sort of let them go at it, as part of the point of the meeting was just to get them all in the same room, regardless of the results, something that wouldn’t happen otherwise.

If Ryan reads this, I do not want him to have a heart attack, so I will say that at least the trash is still being collected 4 days a week and the river looks...not worse. I will keep on capacitating.

Sunday, January 7th

Today was a stellar day. I woke up disoriented because my bed was away from its usual spot, due to yesterday’s epic window installation (it still lacks glass, which comes tomorrow), got up, and made myself a bowl of corn flakes. Eating cereal here has been one of my greatest victories; sure, the milk was warm from having come from recently boiled water and dehydrated milk powder, but I enjoyed it all the same. The weavers got booted from their office in the municipality (into an office without electricity, after they just bought sewing machines. Poor Rachel), so I got out and helped some with the move.

Then the day got interesting: I wanted to start walking around Santo Domingo and collecting information for my community map before it was to start raining. There was something on the map that said “a hidroelectrico,” and, my curiosity piqued, I went to ask Humberto (conveniently, the go-to infrastructure guy in the municipality) what that could mean. He described the hydroelectric plant to me, and when he decided his description was insufficient to explain to the gringa what exactly this plant entailed, he offered to take me up there. So we went on a hike. I showed him all the stuff I needed to put on the map, including infrastructure, natural attractions, and plants.

What he and Flor failed to mention to me before starting is that, between the two of them, they could identify every single plant and tree on the 45-minute walk, and for most of them, they could also identify some sort of use. My map quickly became a mess of about 50 common names of plants, which made me happy in a way I can’t even describe, in any way except “snerdy.” (I know at least one person will get that. Brie, I am counting on you.) My favorite notation that I have found so far, in going through my notes, is “Mosquero: planta. Herpes.” According to Humberto, this plant heals cold sores. Thank goodness for cognates.

On the way, we ran into a sort of crazy older woman from the campo who babbled a lot and tried to sell us her bananas. Flor gave her a sol and told her to cook and eat the bananas herself. They then explained to me that some people in the campo are so poor that they can’t justify eating their own crops, something I already knew, but I found the act of charity refreshing.

Humberto giddily showed me all the hydroelectric infrastructure. My Spanish hydroelectric infrastructure vocabulary is, you know, a little rusty, but I more or less got it and took pictures to ask him about later. I thought we were done, but they insisted we had to go up to the caracoles and take pictures. I didn’t know what caracoles were, and if there is an English word for them other than the exact cognate I still don’t know it, but I assumed, given the theme of the hike, that they had something to do with hydroelectricity. They turned out to be deep, naturally-formed pools in the granite formation. They were pretty cool-looking, and some of them were about 6 feet deep. I tried to describe how identify granite, but again, lacking Spanish geology vocabulary, it was an inadequate lesson. So it turned out the caracoles were part of the “natural attractions” section of the map. I finally got it when they started talking about the tourism potential.

Then we came back, went to a sketchy street restaurant for lunch. A 78-year-old man was sitting there already, and after he started doing what is absolutely my pet peeve in this country, asking Flor about me in front of me in the third person (‘Where is she from? Does she speak Spanish?’), I gave him my best ‘I am positively killing you with my gringa kindness’ smile and said loudly, ‘I speak Spanish. You can talk to me.’ For once, someone actually accepted this and continued the conversation with me, in the second person. He then gave us a lecture about the evils of domestic violence, reiterating that he has been married to his wife for 56 years, “tranquila, sin golpes.” His wife cooked pork behind him and showed no signs of acknowledgement. She was, I suppose, tranquila. Sin golpes.

I got back to my room, finished off the last of the gummi bears I received in the mail (incidentally, I received “my brand” of gummi bears from three separate people, working independently. Fantastic.), and also finished off The Life of Pi, which was a pretty stellar book. Then it started to rain, and I took the greatest nap ever. And then I went to Rachel’s new house and wrote this on her laptop, as mine is still cranky.

I’m aware that Christmas, New Years, and my 21st birthday passed since the last time I wrote in this. Let it be noted that they were each, for highly individual reasons, quite wonderful.

The only one I reflected on in any sort of meaningful way was my birthday. I handwrote this the night before I left for Piura (I can never sleep when I know I have to get up at 3), and it’s sloppy, but more or less says what was on my mind.

So it’s very nearly my 21st birthday, a fact that I am excited about for obvious reasons, namely, legal brewskies! Woo! Oh wait, too bad I myself was forced to share a beer with an 8-year-old at a school party in this country. 21 doesn’t mean a whole lot.

What it does mean, however, is that I am of a less absurd age to be a Peace Corps Volunteer, which is great. I have no evidence to indicate that I am not the youngest PCV in the world (I preemptively apologize to the hypothetical 19-year-old agricultural Volunteer who reads this and knows this title is actually his/hers). This title doesn’t mean a lot, as evidenced by the Peace Corps website only providing statistics on the oldest PCV and not the lower end of the range. However, it’s a big job, representing the left side of the end of the sentence, “Peace Corps Volunteers come from all different stages in life, from…” but I consider myself pretty qualified for it. Since first-turned-into-second grade, I’ve gotten used to being a year younger than everyone “my age,” so all of my birthdays have been met with a little of “FINALLY, I’m the same age as everyone else.” Logically, of course, I wasn’t, so the feeling was short-lived. Peace Corps, where no one is even close to my age (the next one up turned 22 in November), has had the pleasantly unexpected result of making me subconsciously think, “Well, since no one is my age, everyone is ageless to me.” This has been good for my friend-making, not so good for my age self-identity issues, as “ageless” quickly turns into “basically-more-or-less my age.” This happens most often with Andrew, who I totally forget has two and a half-ish years on me, and I will say things to him like, “Oh man, this song is so High School,” to which he will respond, “Seriously? I didn’t even hear it until sophomore year of college.” Which makes sense, because not everyone was in high school from 1999 to 2003, during which, at some point, the song came out. The song in question was Dispatch’s “The General,” if anyone is terribly curious. It also happens when I think about my service, that I will be 22 when I’m done, and that seems like no time from now, because all my friends are already 23. And hey, if they can not die for 23 years, so can I.

None of this would seem terribly important if I didn’t constantly have to explain my age to new people, generally PCVs from Peru 5-7, since everyone in my training group has heard the spiel and is Over It. Still, it probably warrants contemplation. Rachel just launched into an intense contemplation about her headlamp, so I feel justified.